" Aidan advanced on Raven, his glittering eyes golden and piercing as his gaze swept over the mortals huddled behind her. “Come with us,” he ordered abruptly. “Mikhail wishes us to see that you are safe.”
Raven’s eyebrows shot up while Monique clutched her arm, clearly frightened. Byron moved in from the other side, effectively boxing her in. “Why?”
“Mikhail wishes us to see that you are safe, and then we must deal with the mortals,” Aidan explained quietly.
Raven scowled at him. “No one is going to deal with these people. Believe it or not, they have feelings. They’re real human beings, and they’ve been put through hell.”
Aidan glanced at Byron and then pinned Raven with a very stern, very male glare meant to intimidate. “They are mortals who know too much. One of them put his hands on you.”
Raven touched her neck without thinking and then dropped her hands. “Did Mikhail tell you that?” She was furious at that thought, but more upset that she was stuck protecting the couple, when Mikhail clearly was in danger. Even more, Aidan never really looked at the couple as a man and woman, but rather as puppets unable to hear what was being said. She might be Carpathian, but it wasn’t that long ago that she’d been human.
“Mikhail did not need to tell me. I smell his stench on you. I can see the marks of his fingers. It is clear he attempted to kill you. Can you deny it?”
Monique cried out and inched closer to her husband.
Raven sighed. “No, of course not, but there were circumstances you perhaps don’t understand.” She tried to be reasonable when she didn’t feel reasonable. "

― Christine Feehan , Dark Prince (Dark, #1)